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Do you have colonial period ancestors who lived in the Chesapeake Bay states of Virginia and Maryland? Consider joining the Family Tree DNA Early Chesapeake Project.

About 75 percent of seventeenth-century immigrants to the region were indentured servants about whom there are few records. DNA analysis may provide you with the link to genetic cousins around the world. You can reach out to them to compare paper trails to ancestors in Chesapeake towns and English counties. DNA research provides genealogy shortcuts and will connect you to family you would never meet otherwise. In addition, group membership will help you explore your ancestors' world and Chesapeake Bay neighbors. In learning more about the region's physical and social environment as well as neighboring families -- why they came and where they came from -- you may receive clues to extend your research.

Please read more about the background and goals of the project on the Family Tree DNA site. Join 1) from your My Family Tree DNA results page or 2) request a test kit. Here's how:

1) From the Family Tree DNA home page, log in with your FTDNA participant kit number and password. This will take you to your participant personal page. In the left column you can "Join Projects." Click on this, look for "Early Chesapeake," and click to join.

2) If you or a direct male descendant has not been tested, join and order a test kit at the same time from the "Join the Early Chesapeake Group Project" page.

Once you have joined the group, send information about your direct line of descent for the participant tested to the group co-administrator (Dwight Hogge) so that he can add your information to our web page of Early Chesapeake lineages.

Further Reading

Case Study: Applying DNA to Family History Research, The Family Tree Searcher: A Publication of The Gloucester Genealogical Society of Virginia, Vol 12, No 2, December 2008

17th-century Chesapeake Settlers: Some First Colonists were Second Sons of Gentry but Most were Indentured Servants

America: A Promised Land? Indentured Servants in the Colonial Chesapeake

Origins of Colonial Chesapeake Indentured Servants: American and English Sources

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